Photo folder from the Theresienstadt camp

Photo folder from the Theresienstadt camp

TEREZIN – PAMATNIK NARODNIHO UTRPENI – Terezin – Memorial to National Suffering. folder containing 16 photographs (attached in a fold-out strip), depicting various sections of the Terezin (Theresienstadt) camp – the concentration camp for the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia. Published by the National Suffering Memorial in Terezin. Printed by V. Kovarik, Terezin. All photographs are captioned in Czech. Terezin, late 1940s.

The photographs include: the entrance gate to the camp bearing the inscription “Arbeit Macht Frei”, the “Richard” workshop where many prisoners perished, the yard near the command headquarters where newly arrived inmates were received, the women’s courtyard, the torture cell of Terezin, the corpse storage room prior to transfer to the crematorium, the execution yard, the wooden bunks on which the prisoners slept, a prison for special inmates, the “Gate of Death” through which prisoners were led to the yard where they were shot, the cemetery beyond the camp fence, the crematorium where 250 victims were burned daily, and more.

The publisher – the National Suffering Memorial in Terezin – is the official commemorative institution of Terezin, established in 1947 by the Czechoslovak government to preserve and commemorate the sites associated with racial and political persecution during the Nazi occupation. This is an early booklet published by the institution in its formative years.

Terezín (or Theresienstadt) is a fortress in the Labe District of the Czech Republic, about 60 km north of Prague. It served as a military prison during World War I and as a concentration camp for the Jews of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, as well as for Jews from Central and Western Europe, during the Nazi occupation in World War II. The Nazi authorities referred to the site as a ghetto, as part of their attempt to present it as a model camp with an image of “normal” life. It was showcased by the Nazis as a “humane” model camp for propaganda purposes directed at the international community. In reality, it served as a transit station en route to extermination camps such as Auschwitz. Tens of thousands of Jews lived there under severe overcrowding, including the elderly, artists, and intellectuals. Many thousands died in the camp from starvation and disease, and countless others were deported from it to their deaths. Approximately 90% of the Jewish inmates at Theresienstadt were murdered by the Nazis. Of the 160,000 Jewish prisoners sent to the camp, only about 19,000 remained there by the end of the war.

Booklet: 14.5×10.5 cm. Photographs: 10×14 cm. Very good condition.